View from up on the roof . . .

Tony Amos is a research fellow at The University of Texas Marine Science Institute in Port Aransas, and director of the Animal Rehabilitation Keep. When this old world starts getting me down... la-la-lala etc. … (I go) up on the roof.*

Well, this old world doesn’t get me down every day, but every day I do go up on the roof and I often think of that catchy Drifters song of the 1960s. I go up on the roof at UTMSI to measure the evaporation. There is a big stainless steel pan up there with a special micrometer device that can accurately measure the depth of the water in the pan to better than 1/100th of an inch. The depth of the water in the pan will increase when we get rain, and decrease as the water evaporates in the heat of the day.

We are in a semi-arid climate zone where evaporation usually exceeds precipitation (rainfall), and this year it has done that “in spades,” as they say: 3.53 inches of rain has fallen, but 29.87 inches of water has evaporated.

COURTESY PHOTO BY TONY AMOS Brave squirrel A Mexican ground squirrel stands among the Sargassum on midbeach Mustang Island. ‘I don’t know if it was eating the weed, getting some salt or if it had found a sea bean to munch on. It was very risky for the squirrel to come out on to the open beach like this,’ said Tony Amos. I do take time to ponder while up on the roof. I see birds, the tops of trees, kites, parasails, helicopters, high flying jets, and the odd UFO up there. I see clouds, lightning, contrails, sunsets, insects, big ships and little boats going through the pass. I hear birds, cars, ships’ horns, foghorns, thunder, people’s voices and snatches of music wafting up from below. When I must top-up the level of water in the pan, I make a brief inspection of the roof to make sure all the vents, fans, lightning arresters are in working order. It was on one of these trips years ago that I first saw the killdeer pair.

They seemed very agitated and, in killdeer fashion, tried to lure me away from something by feigning injury, dangling a wing as if it was broken. I discovered the something was a nest with four eggs in it. When the eggs hatched, I wondered how the babies were going to survive. Like all shorebirds, killdeer babies are precocial: they are feathered and can walk and even feed themselves as soon as they’re hatched, but they can’t fly, and rely upon the parents to lead them to food and for protection.

Up on the roof, however, there is nothing for them to eat, and danger lurks in the form of laughing gulls and great-tailed grackles that could eat the tiny birds. So, the killdeer has devised a risky strategy. The babies either jump or are pushed off the roof and fall three stories to the ground! They don’t always survive this trauma, but over the years I have seen parents and a baby killdeer or two feeding among the grassy areas beneath the roof.

Not this year, however. A couple of weeks ago, three babies were running around the edge of the roof. I quickly did my measurement and departed. The next day they were gone, but I never saw them or the parents on the ground. Now I see a new nest. Two days ago there was one egg and now there are two. I’ll carefully check it out daily, spending as little time as I can up on the roof. I’ll do my pondering elsewhere.

*To be sung, rather than said.